For the past three years the military academy at Sandhurst has been unable to attract enough recruits and has been short by about 20 out of the 250 cadets needed to keep up numbers each term, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

It comes as the military is desperately short of troops, with 2,500 more people leaving the Services each year than those being recruited, while more than 10,000 soldiers are unfit for frontline duty because of "tour fatigue".

The head of the Army's officer training says politicians need to "sell" the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq better to help make up for the current shortfall in young leaders and the "nation needs to grasp" their importance.

Major Gen David Rutherford-Jones, the commandant of Sandhurst, told the Daily Telegraph: "Just because we are out on operations is a factor to our strength, not a negative.

"I understand that some people may not find that easy but look at our history. I don't think anything has changed and we are just doing what we do and doing it exceptionally well. And people like to be part of an organisation that is winning, professional and fun.

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"I think my job is to sell not necessarily what we are doing in Afghanistan and Iraq as a reason why you want to join the Army, but to sell the value of being in world-class organisation called the British Army."

Military commanders are also debating whether to boost the numbers in Afghanistan next year to approximately 12,000 following the likely withdrawal of troops from Iraq next summer.

But it is feared that efforts to recruit more officers and soldiers are being hampered by the hardships that troops face with critics saying that the Army is dangerously overstretched and that soldiers on the frontline lack vital equipment and are poorly treated when they return home.

A string of inquests into the deaths of frontline soldiers have exposed equipment defects and shortages, prompting the Government to launch a doomed bid to gag coroners' critical language.

Last month a former Parachute Regiment commander, Colonel Stuart Tootal, disclosed that he had quit the Army after 20 years because of the "shoddy" treatment of troops who he said endured low pay, appalling housing and poor treatment on mixed-sex wards at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham.

However Major Gen Rutherford-Jones, 49, who led 20 Armoured Brigade in the early days of the Iraq insurgency in 2003, insisted that while recruiters might need to rework their strategy, it should be "incredibly easy" to sell a career in the Army.

The general said he would refuse to lower the quality level in order to play the "numerical game" in filling up numbers

"Quality is what interests me. Are we falsely going to try and raise the game numerically and risk quality? Absolutely not. This is an Army that needs the best in the world because it wants to be the best in world. We cannot trade on quality."

Despite the fall in numbers the general said young men were "inspired" by seeing similar aged peers interviewed in the press while on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Although civilians were better paid in commercial work it was an "extremely humdrum life" living through a BlackBerry with little chance of adventure.

He added that Sandhurst was still taking in "exceptionally talented people" with graduates making up 80 per cent of cadets and 14 of the 221 officer passing out this summer had degrees from Oxbridge. The parade also included the first Chinese People's Liberation Officer and two Palestinians.